Klondike Lights

The food tastes amazing the first time, because it's free. From then on, rust. The food tastes like rust.
The blonde caged registration woman does not get enough rest. She has outgrown her clothes and tried on six pairs of pants this morning, four shirts and two bras. She wants free breakfast and sometimes works for fourteen hours straight.
The wallpaper is heavy gold strips laced with a decadent repetitive floral design...in red velvet. Three dirty, oil soaked prints hang in gold flaked frames in the dining room.
You wait for the hostess to seat you. She is eighty-seven and suffers from osteoporosis. She'll ask "smoking or non?" grabbing two plastic menus like she's slapping flies. You say "Non?" It's a question because it's all one room, no dividers, and everyone's smoking. You sit. You order. You eat. You flirt with the Mexican busboy. You piss off the old racist with the portable TV on his table. He paid $75 for it. On sale. They go for $150. He warns you "Some of them ain't got no papers...illegals."
Your waitress is too tall to be a servant. She has black lined lips and a crooked smile. Not crooked like you would think. Crooked in the middle. Split. Pretty. Sick. "You know how it is in this town. All flash and no cash." You're in a movie. 1974. She's the ghost of a spurned showgirl.
A grey man follows you out of the casino. He wants your name. You caught him in your digital picture. He watches while you erase it. The manager explains, "No cameras. Guys in here. They got wives at home. They get an escort, don't want nobody seeing them here."
Every night you pack to leave in the morning. Every morning you wake up without your face.
It's covered in lung soot. Everything. Is. There are low bungalow buildings stetching across the parking lot back up to the airport fence. Right by the airport runways. Across the street from the Fire Station. You dream about flying fires.
Gravel on the laundry room floor. Just a little...enough to make you not want to drop your clean socks.
You are expected to stay. Checking in gets you appraised, and maybe they can see the reason you're here. There's failure on your face. Hustlers come here to die.
After day three you say fuck the free pancakes. They taste like soil in your mouth. You avoid the casino and rearrange the room, making strange noises to amuse yourself, hoping the walls are thin, hoping for muffled communication. Nothing. You sleep. You sleep so much you must be sick. Eyes burn like a plastic fire.
The floor is hollow between the beds. On the last night you discover your blanket smells like piss. It's kind of exciting. One smell identified, five more to go. One more night.
Coughing in the next room. Another evening. The desperation of weekly rent. Too bad you're a writer. Too bad "characters" are so dangerous...ly addictive. Spider eggs in the window spells charm. Do Not Disturb on the knob every day for a month. They need a dealer downstairs...and someone to balance drinks. You've already got the uniform. Damage.